


Seeking Warmth

by nowwhateinstein



Category: The X-Files, The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Movie: Fight The Future, POV Dana Scully, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 06:48:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8435656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowwhateinstein/pseuds/nowwhateinstein
Summary: The next memory I have is the fevered sensation of a needle piercing my skin, waking me from my comatose state. Of struggling to breathe as I fight to expel the icy liquid that fills my lungs. Of being cold - so cold, I have trouble focusing my eyes on the man standing in front of me. It’s his voice that I first recognize: "Breathe."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scene of Mulder and Scully's return from Antarctica. Scully POV.

“Aren’t we a pair of ragamuffin Eskimos.” Mulder says the words quietly, just loud enough for me to hear over the crunching cadence of our feet as we trudge across the ice towards the hulking mass of a C-130 aircraft. Despite the geographic faux paux, his words are oddly encouraging, and I do my best to ignore the curious stares of the well-insulated, hale and hearty passengers who stream by us. Compared to them, we do make for a shabby duo: Mulder’s parka is ripped in several places, and the duct tape he used for patching only draws attention to that fact. My jacket isn’t much better. It’s a men’s extra large, the only suitable jacket Mulder could scavenge from the Station’s lost and found. Since all visitors to Antarctica are issued cold weather gear prior to their arrival on the continent, spare parkas are hard to come by. It hangs on me like a sleeping bag - all the better to conceal the fact that the only thing I have on underneath is Mulder’s spare change of long underwear and the extra boots he’d left behind at the Station before setting out to find me. 

Perhaps I could’ve managed to locate some more appropriately-sized clothing if our stay at McMurdo Station had been longer, but by some bureaucratic miracle, we made it to the top of the passenger flight manifest for today - a mere four days after our rescue from Wilkes Land. Given the strange circumstances surrounding our rescue - and the ongoing mystery of my clandestine arrival on the continent - I suspect we’re personae non gratae with the US Antarctic Program; the sooner they can get us off the continent and out of their jurisdiction, the better. 

We’re far behind the rest of the group, now. I’m still weak from dehydration and exposure, and have difficulty maintaining my usual “brisk pace,” as Mulder describes it. The over-sized boots aren’t helping, either. I have to stop and catch my breath for a moment. Despite the thick layers I’m wearing, I can feel the pressure of Mulder’s hand against the small of my back. He hasn’t left my side since my release from the Station's sick bay, and he clearly won’t leave me now. Once, such hovering would have earned him a swift “knock it off, I’m fine” glare from me. Now, though, I welcome the close proximity. His touch is warm and comforting: a talisman that wards off the lingering nightmare of my infection by the virus and my captivity below the polar ice. 

Compared to the other passengers - most of whom have been here for months - we’re traveling light. Mulder tosses his pitifully small duffel atop the mountain of larger luggage and cargo in the center of the hold. I, possessing nothing but the borrowed clothes I’m wearing, bypass the cargo queue and manage to snag two seats together near the front of the aircraft. 

Once all of the passengers have strapped themselves in, the engines roar to life and the plane begins its taxi down the ice runway. As the C-130 accelerates, I manage a glimpse outside the tiny porthole window. Nothing but a flat white surface, occasionally punctuated by black mountains. 

The lights dim in the cargo hold. I rest my head on the thick nylon webbing that serves as a backrest. I’m exhausted, but my mind, still reeling from the events of the past one hundred and twenty hours, refuses to let me sleep.

***  
I don’t remember much of my ordeal or rescue. I remember being stung,of course, of Mulder catching me as I collapse outside his apartment. The paramedics arrive and I’m carted away in an ambulance. Then, nothing but black oblivion.

The next memory I have is the fevered sensation of a needle piercing my skin, waking me from my comatose state. Of struggling to breathe as I fight to expel the icy liquid that fills my lungs. Of being cold - so cold, I have trouble focusing my eyes on the man standing in front of me. It’s his voice that I first recognize.

“Breathe.”

Mulder. He’s real, standing in front of me, his hand - blissfully warm - stroking my frozen face. His voice, his touch wills me to life. I see relief in his eyes when I manage tell him that I’m cold. 

“Hang on. I’m gonna get you out of there.” 

And by some miracle, he does. Down green, nightmarish corridors, past once-human bodies that writhe with creatures that want to kill us, he carries me. 

But my heart, already taxed by effects of the virus, fails in the distressingly frigid temperature, and once more, I’m pitched into the void of cold blackness. Then: pressure on my chest, warmth on my lips, in my mouth - his lips, his mouth, breathing his life into mine.

“Breathe!” His voice again brings me back, forcing me to focus on him and only him. His face hovers inches above mine, frantic worry written across his features.

“Had you big time,” I say, in an effort to reassure him that I’m still alive. He smiles again, and that gives me just enough strength to keep going.

Through pipes and up perilously slick ladders, we crawl and climb. “Keep moving, Scully!” Mulder’s urgent tone tells me that we’re not alone, that someone - something - is in pursuit. We squeeze through a tiny hole in the ice near the surface, narrowly avoiding the collapse of the substructure that buries whatever it was that followed us. 

The sun blinds me as we emerge onto the surface. Mulder is pulling me forward, now; I can barely stand, much less walk. The ice shakes violently beneath our feet and I see his eyes widen in alarm. His fear triggers whatever last reserve of adrenaline my body still possesses, and together, we run.

The ice collapses beneath us. We drop for what seems like an eternity, but in reality must be only a few seconds. The dizzying feeling of free falling is abruptly replaced by the equally disorienting sensation of rising, then sliding, then falling yet again. 

I slam into the ice with a force that nearly knocks me out. I lie there, willing my lungs to expand as I struggle in inhale. One side of my face is numb from being pressed against the ice. Mulder lays beside me. I close my eyes. So tired. 

“Scully, you gotta see this. Scully…” 

I hear his voice, but I’m too exhausted to even lift my head. All I can do is look at him. Wonder and awe wash across his face at whatever it is he sees. He turns to look at me, smiles, then his head drops to the ice. 

We have to keep warm. Slowly, painfully, I crawl towards him. He’s unresponsive, no doubt due to exhaustion and exposure. I pull his body to mine, clutching him like a drowning swimmer would a life ring. Stay with me, I plead silently. Stay with me. I can’t do this alone, I think, echoing the words he told me not that long ago. I hold him for what seems like hours, days. 

The last thing I remember before losing consciousness again are voices pleading with me. “Let go of him, ma’am. We got him. He’ll be ok.” I then feel several hands try to pry Mulder lose from my arms. Too weak to resist, I wearily allow them to take him away; his warmth flees from me, replaced by a frigid blast of air kicked up by what I can barely make out as the blades of a helicopter. Then, nothing but white ice and blue sky.

I awake in what looks like a rudimentary medical clinic. Someone is holding my hand. It’s a hand I recognize immediately: it’s gripped the steering wheel of countless rental cars I’ve ridden in; it’s passed me hundreds of cups of coffee on early mornings and late nights; it’s held my hand before, in other hospitals, through other illnesses. 

“Mulder.”

He looks up when I speak. 

“Scully,” he says, smiling. The relief and tenderness with which he says my name simultaneously alarms and comforts me. His face is covered with what appear to be frostbite burns beneath a week-old growth of beard. His eyes are sunken, tired. 

“Where am I?”

“McMurdo Station.”

That name, plus blurred memories of snow, ice, and impossibly freezing temperatures... “We’re in Antarctica?” 

He nods. “It’s a long story. One I’ll tell you about once they release you from sick bay.”

I’m silent for several moments as the enormity of what he’s saying sinks in. Somehow, I ended up nearly ten thousand miles from DC: at the bottom of the world. And somehow, by some miracle, Mulder made it down here. He managed to find me - out in that vast wilderness of ice - and saved me from a nightmare I’m too afraid to contemplate. All because of a damn bee.

“How did you find me?”

He smiles and squeezes my hand. “I promise I’ll fill you in. But right now, you need to rest.” 

***  
Everyone around us on the plane is either reading or sleeping. I glance over at Mulder. He chews thoughtfully at his bottom lip, the way he does when he’s deep in thought. Perhaps he’s thinking about the thing he saw out on the ice: the thing that left a crater five hundred feet deep and a half-mile wide. The thing I didn’t see, much to his chagrin. Or maybe he’s musing on what fate awaits us back in DC. I have an awful premonition that it’s not what either of us hope it will be. I must catch his eye, because he turns his head to look at me. 

“You should get some sleep, Scully,” he says, his tone one of concern. 

“If anyone needs it, it’s you,” I respond, raising an eyebrow at him. Now that we’re finally homeward bound, I’m beginning to feel more like myself again. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“I caught some shut-eye while you were in sick bay.” He says it with the faintest trace of a smile, as if he, too senses the change in me.

“That was over twenty-four hours ago, Mulder. We have six hours until we land in Christchurch. Let’s both try to get some rest, deal?”

He laughs, and I silently marvel at the ease with which we both slip back into familiar patterns of dialogue. “Deal,” he says. This time, he can’t hide his grin.

“Oh, I almost forgot…” Mulder reaches into his duct-taped pocket. With his other hand, he takes mine, gently turning it so that my palm faces upward. Wordlessly, he deposits something small and gold in it. I have to squint in the dim light to see what it is. My mouth opens in amazement when I recognize my cross necklace. I’d given it up for lost: forever hidden in some dark hole or icy crevasse. The fact that Mulder’s made it appear now, after all we’ve been through, is a miracle. A small miracle when compared to the larger one he pulled off finding me down here at the bottom of the world, perhaps, but a miracle nonetheless. 

I look at him. He’s regarding me with a gaze that is both familiar and thrilling. Tenderness and desire are present in his eyes. It’s the same look, I realize, he had moments before he went to kiss me in the hallway outside his apartment - a moment that seems like a lifetime ago. Then, I found myself hesitating, afraid to reciprocate his acknowledgement of a truth we’d both known. Now, however, in light of everything that’s happened in the past week, it seems like the most natural thing in the world to lean over and kiss him. 

His lips are blistered and chapped, just like mine, from hours of exposure. His stubble feels rough against my face. Those sensations, however, are quickly replaced by a feeling of warmth that starts at my mouth and travels the length of my body. Perhaps it’s the paradoxical realization of just how close to death we both were - and how alive I feel at this moment - but kissing him is exhilarating, even intoxicating. Mulder responds by leaning into me, as if he, too seeks and senses the same drunken warmth. He brings his hand up to cup my face; his thumb gently strokes my frostbitten cheek. We savor each other for a few moments more, then our lips part. 

I feel his hand go to the nape of my neck, pushing my hair back as if he’s looking for something.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing. Just checking for bees.” 

I laugh and rest my head on his shoulder. He responds by putting his arm around me, drawing me close. If the other passengers have noticed our overt displays of affection, they don’t show it. Nor would I care if they did. Once we’re back on US soil, we’ll resume our mantles as Special Agents and its requisite responsibilities and restrictions - if only long enough to see the X-Files - and our partnership - officially dissolved. For the moment, however, we’re just two beaten and battered Antarctic voyagers seeking warmth in each other. Ragamuffin Eskimos, I think, smiling at the thought. I settle in against Mulder as sleep finally overtakes me.


End file.
